oil workers

By Steve Ahlquist - RI Future, November 30, 2015

Two safety inspectors who worked on Spectra Energy’s proposed methane gas pipeline that will cut through Burrillville, RI, say the company cut corners when it came to project, worker and environmental safety.

“Right now, what they’re hoping to do, is they’re hoping to slam all this through, and then at the end ask for forgiveness,” said one of the former inspectors. “Oops, sorry about that, I didn’t know, let me write you a check. Because once this thing’s turning meter, they’re going to be making millions of dollars a day. It doesn’t matter what your problems are…”

The other added, “We were told to shut the fuck up or quit.”

Both men, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, were subcontracted by Spectra and both were terminated from the project this summer. I was introduced to them through FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas), an environmental group that opposes the project, and have spent time talking with both men by phone as well as reviewing audio interviews and emails provided by FANG.

“Like every other company, Spectra gives a tremendous presentation about their commitment to safety, but their actions lack any kind of resolve. No one ever says, ‘Safety’s #2 here,’” said the first inspector. “At every turn when I made a safety suggestion, I was met with monumental resistance from the company on every level.”

Perhaps suspecting their days are numbered, fossil fuel companies are rushing to build the infrastructure required to keep us dependent on methane or “natural” gas for the next 50 years or more, even as evidence mounts that methane is a major contributor to climate change. This gives lie to the claim that methane will serve as a bridge fuel, something to ease the transition from fossil fuels to green energy sources, as the infrastructure investments being made are long term and permanent. Companies are investing billions laying pipelines, building compressor stations, and constructing energy plants and other infrastructure ahead of industry-wide extinction.

In their rush to build, safety and environmental concerns are being brushed aside, suspect many experts. A recent “Pipeline Safety Trust analysis of federal data,” shows that, “new pipelines are failing at a rate on par with gas transmission lines installed before the 1940s.”  Sarah Smith writes that Carl Weimer, director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, told attendees at a National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives annual meeting in Tempe, AZ that, “The new pipelines are failing even worse than the oldest pipelines.”

Though some of the problems may be related to workers learning how to implement the latest technologies, Weimar says, “there’s also some suggestions that we’re trying to put so many new miles of pipeline in the ground so fast that people aren’t doing construction … the way they ought to.”

In the same piece Smith quotes Robert Hall, of the National Transportation Safety Board Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations, who agreed that, “the rapid construction of pipelines in the U.S. is likely a contributing factor to ‘people … out there possibly taking shortcuts or not being as diligent’ as they would be if the pace of construction were less fervent.”

Coming forward to confirm these observations are two former Spectra contractors I’m calling Inspector One and Inspector Two. Both wish to remain anonymous for this piece for personal and professional reasons, though they know that their former bosses may be able to identify them.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 30, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• With union support, indigenous people confront fracking in Argentina - By Adolfo Aguirre, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, June 25, 2015
• Someone Has to Sort Your Recycling, and It’s a Disgusting and Dangerous Job - By Michelle Chen, The Nation, June 24, 2015
• Report: Recycling Workers Exposed to Safety Failures, Needles, High Injury Rates - Press Release, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, June 23, 2015
• Resistance Is Needed to End Corporate Toxic Zones - Eric Loomis interviewed by Mark Karlin, Truthout, June 21, 2015

Green Bans:

• Labor, community unite in protest against Monster in the Mission - By Tim Redmond, 48 Hills, June 23, 2015
• Union workers to rally at ParkMerced - By Tim Redmond, 48 Hills, April 22, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Fruit Company Will Pay $330,000 To Farmworkers Who Got Fired After Reporting Sexual Abuse - By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, Think Progress, June 26, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• South African commission finds police to blame in Marikana deaths - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 25, 2015
• The Face of the Coal Industry - By Nick Mullins, The Thoughtful Coal Miner, June 24, 2015
• New Top Chemical Safety Board Lawyer Suing His Own Agency; Federal Lawsuit Seeking $300,000 + May Receive Sudden Sweetheart Settlement - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, June 24, 2015
• Psychosocial and musculoskeletal risk factors the most widespread in Europe’s workplaces - Press Release, European Trade Union Institute, June 24, 2015
• Department of Energy Cites UT-Battelle, LLC, For Worker Safety And Health Program Violations - By U.S. Department of Energy, Breaking Energy, June 23, 2015
• Flight attendants sue Boeing over 'toxic fumes' on Alaska Airlines jet - By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2015; [related]: Is Aircraft Cabin Air Toxic? - By Gini Harrison, The Conversation, June 20, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Exterran closing Broussard oil, gas equipment plant, laying off 76; Broussard plant laying off 76 total employees - By Bill Lodge, The Advocate, June 28, 2015
• New PBS Documentary Exposes Human Toll Of Oil Boomtown In North Dakota - By Mike Gaworecki, DeSmog Blog, June 26, 2015
• BHP cuts another 140 jobs over abandoned Olympic Dam expansion plans - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 25, 2015
• Are Coal, Oil and Gas the Subprime Assets of the Future? - By Dan Zegart, DeSmog Blog, June 24, 2015
• EIA: Oil layoffs aren’t finished yet - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, June 23, 2015
• APM Terminals to close operations, cut more than 100 port jobs near Houston - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, June 22, 2015
• Caterpillar lets go of 50 workers - By Michael Allan McCrae, Mining.Com, June 22, 2015

Just Transition:

• Business lobbies, unions join push for zero emissions targets - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, June 29, 2015
• Ontario Teachers' Pension Expands Ownership Of BluEarth Renewables - By Staff, North American Windpower, June 26, 2015
• Toronto march to merge economic justice and climate action - By Martin Lukacs, The Guardian, June 25, 2015
• Join the actions for Jobs, Justice and the Climate on July 4 and 5! - By Andrea Harden-Donahue, Rabble.Ca, June 24, 2015
• Investment In Renewable Energy Yields More Jobs Than Fossil Fuel Sector - By Joshua S Hill, Clean Technica, June 23, 2015

Other News:

• South Africa’s gold workers 'unimpressed' with 13% pay rise offer - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 29, 2015; [related]: South African gold sector to table wage offer next week - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 24, 2015
• Strike at Marathon Petroleum refinery ends - By Andrea Rumbaugh, FuelFix, June 23, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW

By Gabriel Levy - People and Nature, June 21, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

A challenge to laws that shackle trade unions in Kazakhstan was mounted at the International Labour Conference this month – and activists hope this will boost workers’ efforts to rebuild grass-roots organisation.

The conference, staged by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations agency,

in Geneva, said Kazakhstan would have to amend the Trade Union Law it passed last year – or face action for breaching its obligations under international treaties.

The conference said that “excessive limitations” on unions, that “limit the right of workers to form and join trade unions of their own choosing”, had to be removed, and laws banning financial assistance to unions from trade unionists in other countries scrapped.

The decision came just after the Kazakh authorities refused registration to the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Kazakhstan, an alternative to the state-run federation of “yellow” (government- and employer-controlled) unions.

Kazakhstan’s Trade Union Law was introduced on the back of the violent repression of oil workers, whose seven-month strike in 2011 – the country’s biggest ever – ended with a police massacre of demonstrators at Zhanaozen. At least 16 were killed and 60 wounded, and an unknown number tortured in police detention.

In 2012, 32 oil workers were put on trial, and some sentenced to imprisonment of up to six years. A wave of repression against journalists, opposition politicians and community activists produced the toughest conditions for social movements in post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s history.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 23, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• In the Global Apparel Industry, Abusive and Deadly Working Conditions Are Still the Norm - By Erik Loomis, In These Times, June 15, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Ben & Jerry’s commits to work with Vermont dairy workers toward agreement to adopt Milk with Dignity Program in company’s Northeast dairy supply chain! - Coalition of Immokalee Workers, June 22, 2015
• Al Jazeera Documentary Shows Mexican Farmworkers’ Struggles in Historic Strike - By Rachel Luban, In These Times, June 20, 2015
• Migrant Farmworkers Ask Ben and Jerry's to Provide "Milk With Dignity" - By Jonathan Leavitt, Truthout, June 19, 2015
• California Court Ruling Could Make It Nearly Impossible for Farmworkers To Win Union Contracts - By David Bacon, In These Times, June 17, 2015
• Sri Lanka: Implement the Glyphosate Herbicide ban immediately! - By National Movement Against Poisons, La Via Campesina, June 17, 2015
• 1000 Cow Factory Farms: Milk crisis - By José Miguel Pacheco Gonçalves, Isabel Vilalba, and Victor Pereira, La Via Campesina, June 16, 2015
• Cycles of Oppression, Cycles of Liberation: The Nasa People of Colombia Are Dispossessed Once Again - By Natalia Fajardo, Upside Down World, June 15, 2015
• West Coast Grange Wars: A Reborn Farmers’ Movement Takes on Corporate Agriculture - By John Collins, In These Times, June 14, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Reflections on the Miners Memorial Weekend: Cumberland, British Columbia - By Nick Mullins, The Thoughtful Coal Miner, June 21, 2015
• It’s “the President’s call”: Safer Communities or More Foot-dragging - By Taylor Smith-Hams, Greenpeace Blog, June 18, 2015
• New York State Legislators Have Just One More Day To Pass a Bill Protecting Nail Salon Workers - By Karen Gwee, In These Times, June 17, 2015
• OSHA says open-flame heater caused gas rig fire that killed three Oklahoma workers - Associated Press, June 17, 2015
• Judge Greenlights Malibu School PCB Lawsuit; District Spending Tops $6 Million in Steps to Avoid Complete Cleanup - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, June 16, 2015
• Campaign Victory: Full Compensation Secured for Rana Plaza Victims - By Judy Gearhart, International Labor Rights Forum, June 8, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• NOV cuts 1,500 jobs in Norway amid crude crunch - By Joshua Cain, FuelFix, June 17, 2015
• Statoil to cut 2,000 jobs, adding to Norway’s woes - Bloomberg, June 16, 2015
• What happened to 160,000 fracking jobs? Under Wolf, the numbers change - By Marie Cusick, State Impact, June 16, 2015
• The dark side of the shale bust - By Nick Cunningham, OilPrice.Com, June 14, 2015

Just Transition:

• Replacing Hazelwood is urgent, but who pays for the jobs transition? - By David Spratt, Climate Code Red, June 17, 2015
• Want More U.S. Jobs? Enforce Carbon Pollution Limits - By Farron Cousins, DeSmog Blog, June 15, 2015

Other News:

• Monument to labor activist Mother Jones rededicated in Mount Olive - By Steven Spearie, State Journal Register, June 20, 2015
• Workers clean up oil spill on California beaches by hand - Associated Press, June 20, 2015
• Could a California labor ruling drive Uber under? - By Heather Smith, Grist, June 17, 2015
• Uber must die - By David Bush, rankandfile.ca, June 16, 2015
• Workers at Chile's Collahuasi copper mine end strike - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 16, 2015
• Steelworkers to vote on agreement to return to work at Galveston Bay refinery - By L.M. Sixel, FuelFix, June 15, 2015
• Martial law has anti-mine protesters back at work - By Franklin Briceno, Associated Press, June 12, 2015
• Outfitters seek exemption from new federal minimum wage; Bill would allow recreation businesses to operate on federal land without paying staff $10.10 an hour - By Elizabeth Shogren, High Country News, June 12, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism

By Jennifer Gollan - Reveal News, June 13, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In the early evening of Sept. 14, 2011, Jebadiah Stanfill was working near the top of an oil rig at a bend in the Missouri River in North Dakota. Jolted by a deafening boom in the distance, he swung around from his perch and saw a pillar of black smoke twisting into the sky.

Less than a mile away, another rig had exploded. “There’s men over there!” a worker below him shouted.

Stanfill, a compact and muscular man in his 30s, descended to the ground and hopped into the bed of a red pickup driven by a co-worker. Bruce Jorgenson, a manager overseeing the work of Stanfill and his crew, jumped into the passenger seat, and they raced to the explosion.

A few minutes later, they reached the burning rig and pulled up next to Doug Hysjulien, who was wandering in a valley and clutching the front of his underwear. The rest of his clothes were gone.

“They’re over there,” Hysjulien shouted, pointing toward the fiery rig. “Go help the other boys. They’re worse.”

Stanfill sprinted until he spotted Ray Hardy, who had been hurled into a patch of gravel. His skin was charred black and peeling. His nails were bent back, exposing the stark white bones of his fingers.

“How many people were on the rig?” Stanfill asked Hardy.

“He’s over there,” Hardy responded, gazing toward a field near the rig. Stanfill scrambled over a berm and waded through knee-high wheat until he found Michael Twinn, lying on his back naked and seared. His hair was singed and his work boots had curled up in the heat. He cried out in agony.

“The derrick man’s dead! The derrick man’s dead!” Twinn screamed.

“They were beyond burned,” Stanfill recalled. “Nothing but char. The smell of flesh burning. … It smelled of crude oil.”

Brendan Wegner, 21, had been scrambling down a derrick ladder when the well exploded, consuming him in a fiery tornado of oil and petroleum vapors. Rescuers found his body pinned under a heap of twisted steel pipes melted by the inferno. His charred hands were recovered later, still gripping the derrick ladder. It was his first day on the rig.

Hardy died the next day of his burns. Twinn had his lower legs amputated. Dogged by post-traumatic stress disorder, he killed himself in October 2013. Each left behind three children. Hysjulien suffered debilitating third-degree burns over half of his body. He is the lone survivor.

To this day, the explosion – pieced together from interviews, court documents and federal and local reports – remains the worst accident in the expansive Bakken oil fields since the boom began in 2006.

Beyond the human toll from that day, which continues to haunt Stanfill and others, the 2011 explosion offers a striking illustration of how big oil companies have largely written the rules governing their own accountability for accidents.

Read the entire article here.

By Gabriel Levy - People and Nature, June 7, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

A protest against Azerbaijan’s crackdown on political dissent will be staged in London this Friday, 12 June, as the first European Games open in Baku.

At least 33 human rights defenders, youth movement activists, bloggers, journalists and others have been jailed in the last year in Azerbaijan – where the UK-based oil group BP is the largest foreign investor.

Campaign groups and media have been shut down, and dissidents forced to leave the country, just as economic problems have brought large numbers of Azeris out to protest.

There has been a “major escalation of government repression, pressure and intimidation, directed at NGOs, civil society activists, journalists and human rights defenders”, a resolution of the European Parliament said in September last year. It highlighted:

• Some of Azerbaijan’s most prominent human rights defenders, including Leyla Yunus of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, and her husband the historian Arif Yunus, have been imprisoned on “apparently politically motivated charges”;
• “Eight activists of the non-governmental youth movement NIDA were convicted on [trumped up] charges of hooliganism, drug possession and possession of explosives” after a wave of demonstrations in 2013;
• The Oil Workers Rights Protection Organisation, the only independent group championing the labour rights of Azeri oil workers, has had its bank accounts frozen and faced other forms of harassment; and
• Many more journalists, human rights defenders and activists are facing trumped-up legal charges, and “dozens” of
  others have been imprisoned on charges such as “hooliganism, drug possession, tax evasion and even treason”.

Despite international criticism, the regime has stepped up repression as next week’s games have drawn nearer. Rasul Jafarov, who organised the “Sing for Democracy” protest when the Eurovision song contest was held in Baku, and then took forward that campaign with “Art for Democracy” was sentenced to six and a half years in jail on 16 April, the same day that BP held its annual shareholders’ meeting in London.

On Friday demonstrators in London will go to the corporate headquarters of BP. It’s an excellent choice: there can not be many economies so completely dominated by one foreign company as Azerbaijan’s is by BP.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 20, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• The ExxonMobil Explosion That Nobody Is Talking About - By Sacha Feinman, Think Progress, April 13, 2015

May Day:

• May Day 2015 Benefit Concert for the Chicago IWW - Chicago IWW
• PROLERSKATING: A May Day Rollerskating Party! - Portland IWW
• Toronto IWW: May 16-17 2015: Organizing 101: Build the Committee Training - IWW.ORG

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• At least 19 dead after illegal mine collapses in Tanzania - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, April 17, 2015
• The Children's Place: Time To Pay Up! - By United Steel Workers, PR News Wire, April 17, 2015
• Coal Companies That Lobbied To Repeal West Virginia Mining Regulations Accused Of Federal Safety Violations - By Cole Stangler, International Business Times, April 15, 2015
• Federal researchers ID at least 9 VOC inhalation deaths at oil sites - By Mike Soraghan, EnergyWire, April 13, 2015
• Short Portraits of 11 Who Died on the Deepwater Horizon - Associated Press, April 18, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Coal Is Dying and It’s Never Coming Back; With or without help from President Obama - By Tim McDonnell, Climate Desk, April 16, 2015
• The Oil Industry’s ‘Man Camps’ Are Dying; Drillers spent big to house workers in the new boomtowns. No more - By David Wethe and Kelly Gilblom, Bloomberg Business, April 15, 2015
• Schlumberger cuts another 11,000 jobs in wake of oil crash - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, April 16, 2015

Just Transition:

• AWEA: US jobs increased 40% in 2014 - By David Weston, Wind Power Monthly, April 16, 2015
• Bonded PV Arrays Could Provide Safer Solar Power - By Bill Brooks, Renewable Energy World, April 19, 2015
• How Worker Co-ops are Moving Beyond Capitalism - By David Morgan, Occupy.Com, April 11, 2015
• Trade Unions condemn Petrocaribe Act; debate fate of Senator - Breaking Belize News, April 2, 2015
• Union funds to bail from flagship renewable energy investment - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, April 16, 2015

1267-Watch:

• Guest Opinion: Dirty fuel exports darken NW’s Earth Day - By Fred Felleman, Crosscut, March 31, 2015
• Jones Act tied to crude oil exports - Marine Log, March 25, 2015
• Railroad unions advancing two-person crew legislation to protect safety - Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, April 17, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Alleging Labor Abuses, U.S. and Mexican Workers Call for Boycott of Driscoll’s Berries - By Rachel Luban, In These Times, April 18, 2015
• Growers Move to Gut California’s Farm Labor Law - By David Bacon, Capital & Main, April 7, 2015
• Indonesia to send home enslaved fishermen; Government moves to return foreigners home after investigative report reveals forced labour in seafood industry - Al Jazeera, April 3, 2015
• Salad days? Semi-slavery on the 'sweating fields' of southern Spain - By Almudena Serpis, The Ecologist, April 16, 2015
• Time to Hold Large Buyers Accountable To Farmworkers Who Grow and Harvest Our Food - Fair World Project, April 2, 2015

Other News:

• Going Global in Richmond? Coalition Seeks Benefits From New UC Berkeley Campus - By Steve Early, BeyondChron, April 10, 2015
• Resurrection unionism: 5 ways labor can rise again - By David Goodner, Waging Non Violence, April 15, 2015
• Sharing is not always sharing - By Dirk Holemans, Green European Journal, April 16, 2015
• Turning Yosemite National Park Into a Cash Cow - By Marc Norton, CounterPunch, April 1, 2015
• Unlikely allies: Mexican miners and farmers unite over toxic spill - By David Bacon, Al Jazeera, April 15, 2015; [related] Miners and Farmers Challenge Mexico's Copper Giant - By David Bacon, Reality Check, April 15, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC